And he's off...

In the library feeling bereft because my regular afternoon tea companion Robin Hunt is leaving today to walk for five months across Europe. Alone. On a shoestring. He is, of course, quite mad, but somehow I never thought he’d actually go. Grown-ups nearing their (ahem) half century tend not to commit such rash acts. Even smug gap-year students prefer less gruelling activities, usually a longhaul flight to somewhere toasty and exotic, a month in an orphanage, and then 11 more on the beach not writing their novel.

But Robin, who has previously featured here in a “late developers” column, is taking his gap year right now, after a long and peculiar career in journalism, wiredness and predicting the future. One day, snuffling in the British Library, Robin found a book called Coryat’s Crudities by Thomas Coryat…